Soprano Delivers Captivating Moments

MUSIC REVIEW: - SARI GRUBER

Sari Gruber's Singing Cast A Spell Over The Audience At Her Recital In Port Orange.

April 23, 2002|By Steven Brown, Sentinel Classical Music Critic

PORT ORANGE -- Thirty seconds or so when her voice was silent showed what a grip soprano Sari Gruber can have on an audience.

It was at the close of "The Quest," a Sergei Rachmaninoff song that depicts someone searching through a forest for the source of a seductive, laughing voice. Gruber's voice welled up urgently in the song's climax, then subsided. As pianist Cameron Stowe took over with the postlude, the woeful expression locked into Gruber's face -- intensified by her cascade of dark hair -- was her last contribution.

But it was an arresting one. The proof came after Stowe finished. Gruber kept holding that heavy look, and she held the audience as well: Only when her face finally eased did the rustle of bodies relaxing into seats show that she had finally let the audience go. How's that for presence?

That may have been the most potent such moment in her recital Friday at Port Orange Presbyterian Church. But it was hardly the only one. With Gruber, songs weren't just a matter of appealing tunes or beguiling tones -- though she delivered plenty of those along the way. No, Gruber had the voice and personality to make a song into a glimpse of a living, breathing person.

Not just any singer could have created as varied a cast of characters as Gruber did in her recital, sponsored by Central Florida Cultural Endeavors and the Marilyn Horne Foundation.

At one extreme was the cheerful lover in Hugo Wolf's buoyant little "Springtime Throughout the Year": Gruber floated through it with a silvery tone that bathed the flowers she sang about in sunshine. At the other extreme was the person obsessed by that voice in Rachmaninoff's "Quest."

The ending was so effective only because what led up to it had been just as powerful. In the song's first part, where that mysterious laughter in the distance begins working its spell, the excitement came across in the gleam and vibrancy Gruber's voice took on as it soared. In the second half, where anticipation turns to desperation, Gruber sang with even more abandon. Her voice soared again. But now there was a haunting, fuller sound going along with the gleam. The wordless outcry at the peak had the impact of a shriek -- but without the shriekiness.

Between the extremes, Gruber and Stowe created a wealth of colorful vignettes. In Samuel Barber's "Nuvoletta," from a snippet of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake describing an apparition in the night, they worked mainly in wisps and shimmers. Through sheer delicacy, they revealed what Joyce meant when he wrote the likes of "she tossed her sfumastelliacinous hair."

In Hugo Wolf's "The Coy One," Gruber showed what a coquette the sheperdess in question was even when there were no words spelling it out. The slinkiness she put into the "lala" refrain got the idea across, and the sway of her hips fleshed out the details.

But she knew when to be simple too. She captured the mood of Charles Ives' "Serenity," a prayer, by going for simplicity. She just clasped her hands before her and spun the music out in an unruffled pianissimo.

That wasn't the only number that relied greatly on the allure of Gruber's singing and Stowe's playing. When songs needed silkiness and warmth, they delivered. Barber's "Sure on This Shining Night" was magical. And Gruber sang "Bill" from Showboat in tones that glowed with affection.